(no subject)
literature paper #2
Within the novels, The Woman in White and Seasons of Migration to the North, there are repeat themes of strong female characters being destroyed by male counterparts. This Literary move of stopping strong females helps to reiterate the society/time period in which the novels were written. The Victorian era’s the Woman in White had the overwhelming male character Count Fosco, who assisted in the destruction of the strong female characters, where as the early 1900's novel Seasons of Migration to the North, utilized both the Arab-Sudanese culture, and severely predatory males to destroy those women. There are 4 women who’s lives or strength were taken from them by some means or another-Marian Halcombe, Jean Morris, Eleanor Fosco, and Hosna Sa’eed. Through destroying these women, the men who did so created an almost paradox. When the Count had destroyed Madame Fosco’s spirit, he moved on to Marian, who eventually help lead to his downfall. Mustafa Sa’eed felt that he had no choice but to kill Jean Morris, as that was his right, and almost on her orders he did so, essentially destroying himself. Wad Rayyes, by trying to rape and take Hosna as his wife forced her into a corner where she felt that she had to kill him to survive, and he finished it off by killing her, meeting his own doom moments later. Each of these women who were destroyed or hurt helped in the eventual destruction of whomever had hurt them.
Eleanor Fosco was the only woman of the four aforementioned women who honestly didn’t seem to mind that her individuality and self had essentially been destroyed by her husband. “[her eyes] are generally turned on her husband, with the look of a mute submissive inquiry which we are all familiar with in the eyes of a faithful dog,” (219). Marian describes Madame Fosco with an almost awe. In the time period it was appropriate for a women to just sit tight and do what she was told “For the common purposes of society the extraordinary change thus produced in her, is, beyond all doubt, a change for the better,” (219), however there is this sense that something isn’t quite right. “I have once or twice seen sudden changes of expression on her pinched lips, and heard sudden inflexions of tone in her calm voice, which have led me to suspect that her present state of suppression may have sealed up something dangerous in her nature, which used to evaporate harmlessly in the freedom of her former life,”(219). There comes a point where Madame Fosco appears to speak out in defense of Marian and Laura, yet it is obvious that she is still under Count Fosco’s thumb. “[the Count’s eyes] turned away from me as soon as he had spoken and looked significantly at his wife..... ‘Favour me with your attention, for one minute’ she said, in her clear icily-suppressed tones. ‘ I have to thank you, Sir Percival, for your hospitality; and to decline taking advantage of it any longer. I remain in no house in which ladies are treated as your wife and Miss Halcombe have been treated here to-day!’”(299). This statement is yet another example of Madame Fosco’s submission to her husband. Towards the middle of the novel, when all the true tricks and deceptions begin, Madame Fosco almost switched positions with her husband. When “Lady Glyde”is brought to their home, and immediately gets sick, Madame Fosco takes over nursing for the sick woman, and after “Lady Glyde’s” unfortunate death, Madame Fosco says to herself “I must prepare the Count”(412). She is also the one who prepares and puts together the funeral for Lady Glyde, yet she does all this under orders from her husband. Although Madame Fosco doesn’t have anything to do directly with the downfall of her husband, she is one strong female character who was dominated by a male and yet, she didn’t seem to mind so much. “Never before have I beheld such a change produced in a woman by her marriage as had been produced in Madame Fosco,”(218)
Hosna Sa’eed is at most a minor character in the book Season of Migration to the North, and barley appears in the beginning, but by the end of the book she is a big part of the story. She is one of the daughters of a man named Mahmoud and as a child was known for her happiness and carefree manner. She marries Mustafa Sa’eed and seems genuinely happy with him. When Mustafa dies, an elderly man in the village Wad Rayyes wants to make her his wife. One of many. She refuses, but eventually her father forces her too. Wad Rayyes tries to consummate the marriage, but Hosna won’t allow him to for the greater part of a month. Finally among screams from Wad Rayyes and Hosna, other villagers investigate the house and find horror. “I raised the lamp and saw that every inch of [Hosna]’s body was covered in bites and scratches- her stomach, thighs and neck. The nipple of one breast had been bitten through, and blood poured down from her lower lip. There is no strength and no power save in God. Wad Rayyes had been stabbed more than ten times- in his stomach, chest, face and between his thighs.... We found her lying on her back with the knife plunged into her heart,”(127). When Wad Rayyes tries to strip Hosna Sa’eed of her dignity and her essentially destroy her, she turned around and truly destroyed him. Stabbing him was an act of passion, but it wasn’t a positive passion in the least. It was a way to truly hurt him, to destroy him as he tried to destroy her, and Wad Rayyes oldest wife, Mabroula knows this and says so. “Women, let everyone of you go about her business. Wad Rayyes dug his grave with his own hands, and Bint Mahmoud [Hosna], God’s blessings be upon her, paid him out in full,”(128).
Marian Halcombe is an interesting character when looking at her in these terms because she wasn’t really destroyed by a man, but she was severely violated by Count Fosco. She is truly destroyed as the protagonist of the story by a thunderstorm that gives her typhoid fever, but then her care is overlooked by Count Fosco. Marian’s Diary is her most sacred possession. It holds all her deepest thoughts and confessions. “I am almost afraid to confess it, even to these secret pages. The man has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like him. In two short days, he has made his way straight into my favourable estimation...” (220). So when Fosco gets a hold of this secret Diary and violates it by reading it and even writing in it, it is equivalent to rape. Though he speaks of Marion in a very positive good light, “Admirable woman!
I allude to Miss Halcombe.
Stupendous effort!
I refer to the Diary.
Yes! these pages are amazing,”(343). He even goes so far as to say that it is possible that “under happier circumstances how worthy I should have been of Miss Halcombe- how worthy Miss Halcombe would have been of ME,”(343). With this rape of the pages of her Diary, Count Fosco is in a certain way destroying some of Marian. He claims to have only care for her in his heart, but he abuses this Diary, and the minimal respect she might have had for him. At the end of the novel, when Count Fosco is finally brought to a form of justice, Marian had her last word. She helped destroy him just as he had destroyed and raped her thoughts and her Diary, though not intentionally. She destroyed him simply because he cared for her. “Behold the cause, in my Heart- behold, in the image of Marian Halcombe, the first and last weakness of Fosco’s life!”(627).
Jean Morris is the last of the women destroyed by a man and she had destroyed him before he destroyed her. Mustafa Sa’eed chased Jean Morris for years before they got married. He had destroyed many women in his life, each resulting in a suicide, and this was a woman who he couldn’t really woo and just win over. He chased her and she mocked him and his masculinity. “‘I swear I’ll kill you,’ I shouted at her. ‘You only say that,’ she said with a jeering smile. ‘What’s stopping you from killing me? What are you waiting for? Perhaps you’re waiting till you find a man lying on top of me, and even then I don’t think you’d do anything. You’d sit on the edge of the bed and cry,’ ”(162). She truly has him in a bind and though he loves her and despises her, he stays with her, until one night in February when the final confrontation comes. “This night was to be the night of truth and of tragedy,”(163). Mustafa kills Jean that night, but plunging a dagger into her chest and lying on top of her, yet even in this moment as he kills her, she controls him still. “ ‘ I love you,’ she said to me, and I believed her. ‘I love you,’ I said to her, and I spoke the truth.”(165) She hold him until the very end, and then her ghost seems to hold him after that. When Mustafa disappears, he disappears because of Jean. In that one moment when she dies, everything is perfect and everything is wrong all at once and Mustafa seeks that still. “ and as I said to her ‘I love you, my darling,’ and the universe with it’s past, present and future, was gathered together into a single point before and after which nothing existed,”(165).
In the novels, The Woman in White and Season of Migration to the North, there are 4 strong women who are destroyed by men. Yet, though these men destroy them in various ways, each of these women find a way to assert in some way. Madam Fosco by taking care of the Count, Marian Halcombe purely by her nature, Hosna Sa’eed by murdering the one who violates her, and Jean Martin by never really giving up control in the first place.
Destruction.
By Jasmine Trosian
Within the novels, The Woman in White and Seasons of Migration to the North, there are repeat themes of strong female characters being destroyed by male counterparts. This Literary move of stopping strong females helps to reiterate the society/time period in which the novels were written. The Victorian era’s the Woman in White had the overwhelming male character Count Fosco, who assisted in the destruction of the strong female characters, where as the early 1900's novel Seasons of Migration to the North, utilized both the Arab-Sudanese culture, and severely predatory males to destroy those women. There are 4 women who’s lives or strength were taken from them by some means or another-Marian Halcombe, Jean Morris, Eleanor Fosco, and Hosna Sa’eed. Through destroying these women, the men who did so created an almost paradox. When the Count had destroyed Madame Fosco’s spirit, he moved on to Marian, who eventually help lead to his downfall. Mustafa Sa’eed felt that he had no choice but to kill Jean Morris, as that was his right, and almost on her orders he did so, essentially destroying himself. Wad Rayyes, by trying to rape and take Hosna as his wife forced her into a corner where she felt that she had to kill him to survive, and he finished it off by killing her, meeting his own doom moments later. Each of these women who were destroyed or hurt helped in the eventual destruction of whomever had hurt them.
Eleanor Fosco was the only woman of the four aforementioned women who honestly didn’t seem to mind that her individuality and self had essentially been destroyed by her husband. “[her eyes] are generally turned on her husband, with the look of a mute submissive inquiry which we are all familiar with in the eyes of a faithful dog,” (219). Marian describes Madame Fosco with an almost awe. In the time period it was appropriate for a women to just sit tight and do what she was told “For the common purposes of society the extraordinary change thus produced in her, is, beyond all doubt, a change for the better,” (219), however there is this sense that something isn’t quite right. “I have once or twice seen sudden changes of expression on her pinched lips, and heard sudden inflexions of tone in her calm voice, which have led me to suspect that her present state of suppression may have sealed up something dangerous in her nature, which used to evaporate harmlessly in the freedom of her former life,”(219). There comes a point where Madame Fosco appears to speak out in defense of Marian and Laura, yet it is obvious that she is still under Count Fosco’s thumb. “[the Count’s eyes] turned away from me as soon as he had spoken and looked significantly at his wife..... ‘Favour me with your attention, for one minute’ she said, in her clear icily-suppressed tones. ‘ I have to thank you, Sir Percival, for your hospitality; and to decline taking advantage of it any longer. I remain in no house in which ladies are treated as your wife and Miss Halcombe have been treated here to-day!’”(299). This statement is yet another example of Madame Fosco’s submission to her husband. Towards the middle of the novel, when all the true tricks and deceptions begin, Madame Fosco almost switched positions with her husband. When “Lady Glyde”is brought to their home, and immediately gets sick, Madame Fosco takes over nursing for the sick woman, and after “Lady Glyde’s” unfortunate death, Madame Fosco says to herself “I must prepare the Count”(412). She is also the one who prepares and puts together the funeral for Lady Glyde, yet she does all this under orders from her husband. Although Madame Fosco doesn’t have anything to do directly with the downfall of her husband, she is one strong female character who was dominated by a male and yet, she didn’t seem to mind so much. “Never before have I beheld such a change produced in a woman by her marriage as had been produced in Madame Fosco,”(218)
Hosna Sa’eed is at most a minor character in the book Season of Migration to the North, and barley appears in the beginning, but by the end of the book she is a big part of the story. She is one of the daughters of a man named Mahmoud and as a child was known for her happiness and carefree manner. She marries Mustafa Sa’eed and seems genuinely happy with him. When Mustafa dies, an elderly man in the village Wad Rayyes wants to make her his wife. One of many. She refuses, but eventually her father forces her too. Wad Rayyes tries to consummate the marriage, but Hosna won’t allow him to for the greater part of a month. Finally among screams from Wad Rayyes and Hosna, other villagers investigate the house and find horror. “I raised the lamp and saw that every inch of [Hosna]’s body was covered in bites and scratches- her stomach, thighs and neck. The nipple of one breast had been bitten through, and blood poured down from her lower lip. There is no strength and no power save in God. Wad Rayyes had been stabbed more than ten times- in his stomach, chest, face and between his thighs.... We found her lying on her back with the knife plunged into her heart,”(127). When Wad Rayyes tries to strip Hosna Sa’eed of her dignity and her essentially destroy her, she turned around and truly destroyed him. Stabbing him was an act of passion, but it wasn’t a positive passion in the least. It was a way to truly hurt him, to destroy him as he tried to destroy her, and Wad Rayyes oldest wife, Mabroula knows this and says so. “Women, let everyone of you go about her business. Wad Rayyes dug his grave with his own hands, and Bint Mahmoud [Hosna], God’s blessings be upon her, paid him out in full,”(128).
Marian Halcombe is an interesting character when looking at her in these terms because she wasn’t really destroyed by a man, but she was severely violated by Count Fosco. She is truly destroyed as the protagonist of the story by a thunderstorm that gives her typhoid fever, but then her care is overlooked by Count Fosco. Marian’s Diary is her most sacred possession. It holds all her deepest thoughts and confessions. “I am almost afraid to confess it, even to these secret pages. The man has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like him. In two short days, he has made his way straight into my favourable estimation...” (220). So when Fosco gets a hold of this secret Diary and violates it by reading it and even writing in it, it is equivalent to rape. Though he speaks of Marion in a very positive good light, “Admirable woman!
I allude to Miss Halcombe.
Stupendous effort!
I refer to the Diary.
Yes! these pages are amazing,”(343). He even goes so far as to say that it is possible that “under happier circumstances how worthy I should have been of Miss Halcombe- how worthy Miss Halcombe would have been of ME,”(343). With this rape of the pages of her Diary, Count Fosco is in a certain way destroying some of Marian. He claims to have only care for her in his heart, but he abuses this Diary, and the minimal respect she might have had for him. At the end of the novel, when Count Fosco is finally brought to a form of justice, Marian had her last word. She helped destroy him just as he had destroyed and raped her thoughts and her Diary, though not intentionally. She destroyed him simply because he cared for her. “Behold the cause, in my Heart- behold, in the image of Marian Halcombe, the first and last weakness of Fosco’s life!”(627).
Jean Morris is the last of the women destroyed by a man and she had destroyed him before he destroyed her. Mustafa Sa’eed chased Jean Morris for years before they got married. He had destroyed many women in his life, each resulting in a suicide, and this was a woman who he couldn’t really woo and just win over. He chased her and she mocked him and his masculinity. “‘I swear I’ll kill you,’ I shouted at her. ‘You only say that,’ she said with a jeering smile. ‘What’s stopping you from killing me? What are you waiting for? Perhaps you’re waiting till you find a man lying on top of me, and even then I don’t think you’d do anything. You’d sit on the edge of the bed and cry,’ ”(162). She truly has him in a bind and though he loves her and despises her, he stays with her, until one night in February when the final confrontation comes. “This night was to be the night of truth and of tragedy,”(163). Mustafa kills Jean that night, but plunging a dagger into her chest and lying on top of her, yet even in this moment as he kills her, she controls him still. “ ‘ I love you,’ she said to me, and I believed her. ‘I love you,’ I said to her, and I spoke the truth.”(165) She hold him until the very end, and then her ghost seems to hold him after that. When Mustafa disappears, he disappears because of Jean. In that one moment when she dies, everything is perfect and everything is wrong all at once and Mustafa seeks that still. “ and as I said to her ‘I love you, my darling,’ and the universe with it’s past, present and future, was gathered together into a single point before and after which nothing existed,”(165).
In the novels, The Woman in White and Season of Migration to the North, there are 4 strong women who are destroyed by men. Yet, though these men destroy them in various ways, each of these women find a way to assert in some way. Madam Fosco by taking care of the Count, Marian Halcombe purely by her nature, Hosna Sa’eed by murdering the one who violates her, and Jean Martin by never really giving up control in the first place.
Destruction.
By Jasmine Trosian